Power Query Partial Lookup: Text Categorization Like a Pro in 5 MINUTES!

Power Query Partial Lookup: Text Categorization Like a Pro in 5 MINUTES!

Struggling to categorize messy data in Excel? Whether it's bank statements, customer feedback, or sales records, manual text categorization is tedious and prone to errors. But don’t worry—Power Query has you covered!

In this tutorial, we’ll explore partial lookups in Power Query, a powerful technique that allows you to categorize data based on keywords and logic, even when there isn’t an exact match.

We’ll start with a simple example: categorizing bank statement transactions using a lookup table of keywords and their categories. But this method goes beyond statements—it’s perfect for any text-based data analysis.

Here’s what you’ll learn step by step:
✔️ Why simple merging doesn’t work for partial matches.
✔️ How to import and prep your data (bank statements and lookup table) in Power Query.
✔️ The importance of Table.Buffer for large datasets and faster processing.
✔️ Using Text.Contains with case-insensitive matching for accurate results.
✔️ Avoiding pitfalls like duplicate records by grabbing the first match only.
✔️ Handling uncategorized rows and errors using try ... otherwise.
✔️ Advanced possibilities: using multiple lookup tables and applying complex logic.

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have a robust, scalable solution for automating text-based data categorization, saving you hours of work.

💡 Pro Tip: This technique works best when your keyword table is sorted from the most specific to the most general keywords for better accuracy.

Download file:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

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Timestamps:
0:00 – Introduction to Partial Lookups and Data Challenge
0:24 – Step 1: Import Bank Statements and Lookup Table
1:20 – Step 2: Add a Custom Column for Matching Keywords
2:20 – Step 3: Handle Case Sensitivity with TextContains
3:00 – Step 4: Avoid Duplicates by Selecting First Match
4:00 – Expand Keywords, Handle Errors, and Refresh

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